Clarification: I don’t just want the reason it hasn’t happened yet. Like- “Well, I guess we never felt the inclination to do such a thing”
Read it almost like:

Why shouldn’t Classic-Castle have a Concept art page? What’s stopping us? What do we need to do, to accomplish this? Etc…

In my own humble opinion, this is one area where Classic-Space is rather showing us up. Here’s a link. And of course this isn’t about beating the Jones’s/Spacers. It’s about taking a hint/good-idea from our fellows and implementing it here.

I'm not being snarky, but my immediate reaction is to turn your questions back to you:
Why should Classic-Castle have a Concept art page? What would be the purpose?

I followed your spacer's link and looked around. My reaction: nice pics, but what have they got to do with Lego?

I guess I'm saying that before you can ask why not you need to present the why convincingly.

Alan

I'm a human BEING, not a human doing!The two most important days of your life are the day you are born
and the day you discover why. (Donald Sensing)
One plus one equals three... for large values of one. (Bruce Fournier)

To me, this is accomplished by the Medieval Life forum, which often has posts linking to pictures of real castles, weaponry, heraldry, relevant movies, etc. Also, if you go to the links page and scroll down you'll find links to non-LEGO castle sites. It would be wonderful if someone would go through and come up with an updated link list for some of this inspirational material and write up an article to go in the "how to" section. I'll add it to my list, but with a new job and a new child I think others will get to this much much sooner than I will ever be able to. Remember, anyone is welcome to write up an article.

I've found mountains worth of inspirational material in the Medievil Life fourm to be honest I think having all that information there organized through various threads is more convenient than say a page of conceptual art. Plus it allows for any member of CC to post inspirational images without anyone having to resort to complicated time consuming reference database creation.

Anyway, I think this is a good idea. However, I think the art should be more general, 'concept art' seems a little too, well, specific, if you know what I mean. Also, perhaps it could be divided into pictures of things drawn as Lego (think Rayhawk) and general medeival/fantasy art.

Great! This is just the sort of dialogue I was hoping of starting. Now let me add my own input…

footsteps wrote:I guess I'm saying that before you can ask why not you need to present the why convincingly.

Alan

…Ok, that’s a fair question. I guess that the stock answer is, in order to provide inspiration for Castle Lego Builders.Example: In the “Making of” special feature in my LOTR dvd, they show how they went about making Hobbiton. The long and short of it is that before they started building anything, they brought in a bunch of artists to do concept art and lay the foundation for the setting. I can only speak for myself here, but I know that I’ve had times where I coulda used some inspiration.

DARKspawn wrote:Well, actually it does. All concept art & inspirational material is usually posted in the Medieval Life forum

Bruce N H wrote:Hey Micah,

To me, this is accomplished by the Medieval Life forum, which often has posts linking to pictures of real castles, weaponry, heraldry, relevant movies, etc.

So you're saying I'm trying to sell ice cubes to an eskimo, right? Ok, point taken. And I’ll take back what I said about Classic-Space showing us up in this area. However… -and it could just be me, but- it seems like for all the historical/real stuff there, that the fantastic side of the coin isn’t really turning up as much. You know… Evil castle in a lava pit. Ninjas fighting Yetis on some mountain in Tibet. That stuff.

LORD DOOM wrote:I've found mountains worth of inspirational material in the Medievil Life fourm to be honest I think having all that information there organized through various threads is more convenient than say a page of conceptual art. Plus it allows for any member of CC to post inspirational images without anyone having to resort to complicated time consuming reference database creation.

Let me pitch you an idea here. How about, a brickshelf/maj/flicker/what-have-you folder with various categories/subfolders…

…organizing the pictures so everything will be easy to find. The only thing it wouldn’t include would be all your informative-text-documents.The other thing is that anyone who had the password could contribute pictures. I suppose there would have to be some screening process to run password applicants through. Nothing too demanding though. After all, I doubt we’d have any trouble with any of the regulars around here.

It shouldn’t be that hard to do. Wait! What am I saying? I could probably do it myself! Maybe it will wind up that way. Who knows?

LORD DOOM wrote:Could it be that there's another Micah here on CC? (If so, hello!)

Hello, yourself. It’s Micah Berger, actually. For the record- I too was unaware of the existence of a parallel Micah. Stranger things have happened I guess.

Sir Kohran wrote:Firstly, let me say it's good to see you're still around Micah

Anyway, I think this is a good idea. However, I think the art should be more general, 'concept art' seems a little too, well, specific, if you know what I mean. Also, perhaps it could be divided into pictures of things drawn as Lego (think Rayhawk) and general medeival/fantasy art.

- Matt

Yeah, I’m still lurking about. Was trying to have a Dark-Ages actually, but every time I tried to get out… well, you know…

I think I know what you mean by ‘less specific’. What if we rephrased it “Inspirational pictures” instead of "Concept Art"? Hopefully there would be photos and maps and stuff in addition to the artwork.

LORD DOOM wrote:I've found mountains worth of inspirational material in the Medievil Life fourm to be honest I think having all that information there organized through various threads is more convenient than say a page of conceptual art. Plus it allows for any member of CC to post inspirational images without anyone having to resort to complicated time consuming reference database creation.

Let me pitch you an idea here. How about, a brickshelf/maj/flicker/what-have-you folder with various categories/subfolders…<snip!> What if we rephrased it “Inspirational pictures” instead of "Concept Art"? Hopefully there would be photos and maps and stuff in addition to the artwork.

Perhaps a thread should be started for this purpose in the Medieval Life forum, and then an admin could sticky it? Then, all who are interested can post images - or links thereof - and they'd be all in one place.

Azaghal wrote:Perhaps a thread should be started for this purpose in the Medieval Life forum, and then an admin could sticky it? Then, all who are interested can post images - or links thereof - and they'd be all in one place.

This is an excellent idea. CC members can post their inspirational links in a thread. Later, the best links could be put in a permanent page on CC. If a thread is started, we will sticky it.

I'm not trying to criticize the efforts already put into the Inspirational Pictures thread, but the way I see it, a gallery like the one at Classic Space has two major advantages:

- Categories and better search options.

- Images are hosted locally. As time goes by, the links in the thread we have now will start to die (clicking around I already found one dead link).

For a concept art gallery to work properly there has to be a lot of pictures, and they have to be easily accessible. Clicking links to see what is behind them is not easy access. Neither is scrolling through page after page to find what you're looking for.

Azaghal wrote:Perhaps a thread should be started for this purpose in the Medieval Life forum, and then an admin could sticky it? Then, all who are interested can post images - or links thereof - and they'd be all in one place.

This is an excellent idea. CC members can post their inspirational links in a thread. Later, the best links could be put in a permanent page on CC. If a thread is started, we will sticky it.

Ben

As stated above those inspirational links can become dead links. It would be better if a certain criteria for selection would allow admins to re-copy photos to a CC linked picture folder so they don't end up going the way of the dodo.

As for site navigation, who cam blame us if we are a little... medieval with web design?